The Book of Speculation: A Novel

Frank nods. “She left with him. Alice, Simon, Enola, all of them went together.”


Churchwarry smiles. Fitting, he thinks. A small flash of white rolls at the top of a wave. Too far out to reach, Churchwarry waits for it to come in. “Simon’s family, yours, mine, there’s history there.” The rest he does not know how to say. “In a strange way we know each other, Mr. McAvoy. You have grandparents a few generations back who went by the name of Peabody.”

Here a murmur. “I do. And?”

“I was hoping to be able to tell Simon; I think he’d find it important. Does the name Ryzhkov mean anything to you? Ryzhkova, perhaps?”

Franks shakes his head.

“Ah, never mind then. Have you ever wondered why you’re drawn to certain people?”

“Haven’t thought much about it,” Frank says, though he knows it is a lie.

Churchwarry inhales deeply. He’s never understood the uninquisitive; but Frank McAvoy is a boatwright, so there must be a spark of art somewhere in him. A small white rectangle washes in on the tide, swaying with the waves. Churchwarry bends down for a closer look. A wave carries the flash of white close enough for him to snatch it. A bit of paper, soft, ruined. Out in the water another piece rolls in. Churchwarry’s hands shake. A sharp pain runs through his chest, but it is soon chased by elation. He is touching history. His history.

“What’s that?” Frank asks.

“A tarot card, I think,” Churchwarry says. Across its face a blurred image, the faint outline of what was once a man’s leg, with a small dog by its heel. The Fool. He watches the ink bleed and pool around his thumb until the last suggestion of what had been washes away.

“Oh, hell. Those were Paulina’s,” Frank mutters.

Churchwarry looks for cards in the waves. He thinks of all Simon told him and what little he remembers of the book. Of course. It was the tarot cards. There had been something more about the sketches, something outside the pleasure of old paper and fading ink. It makes sense, he thinks, that the family of mermaids would destroy a curse with water, far more sense than burning things. He chuckles. More poetic. He looks at the man next to him, then thinks of the young man he never met. Alive. Churchwarry knows it matters little how much of it he believes, only that Simon believed. And he’d like to as well. For all the wideness of the water, the town he is in feels closed, isolated. Perhaps the book opened a door; books have a way of causing ripples. He watches a card dip and vanish under a whitecap and sees in the water’s spray a hope so bright it blisters.

At the shoreline a dark shape skitters near the sand. Churchwarry can make out the gentle movement of a sharp tail. He leans closer. “Horseshoe crab,” he says softly. He turns to Frank, smiling at the descendant of the book’s original author. “Magnificent creatures.” He thinks on how they grow and shed shells, each new skin a soft and glistening beginning. Millennia of crawling, traveling, and clearing their tracks with swishing tails, patiently correcting. He smiles.

“Mr. McAvoy, I’d like to see that letter now. Then I think we should have a drink if you are so inclined. I suspect that we could become friends.”

*

The car is the only noise for a hundred miles, even when passing through the city, as if the world has gone to sleep around them. The toll collectors make no remarks at the dented yellow trailer pulled by a car barely held together by rust.

“It looks like hell, but the engine is still good,” Enola says.

Alice doesn’t know whether to believe her, or whether to care. Being broken down in Delaware would still be preferable to being broken down in Napawset. She feels bad for leaving her mother, but knows that staying would have been worse. Impossible. Her mother needed her to go. It’s not good for children to see a parent grovel, her mother told her on the porch. Go for a while. When you call and both your father and I pick up the phone, come visit. Alice knows her mother, how she can shame someone with a look. Her father will grovel. She almost feels sorry for him, but then it is easier to decide not to think about him at all.